Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Judd

Do you happen to own also a Corporate site where you speak about the company that owns all 20 schools?

Let me know maybe there is a solution to your question with this site declaring the ownership of all 20 and the 20 declaring that that is the page where the original information comes from, though not duplicate content.

Hope to help you

Cheers

Claude

Hello,

We are currently researching the case of a client that suffered greatly after a campaign of reverse SEO. In a short spam of time (about 6 months) thousands of foul links were created pointing at this site, and as a consequence, it got an algorithmic penalization, and organic traffic dropped almost by half.

Does anyone has any experience with this kind of situations we could learn from? Obviously, we are already proceeding to disavow such bad links, but we'd also love to get to know who is behind this. Is there any way of finding out who or what company originated these links. Many bad sites were specifically created to harm this client's reputation, but the registrant is privacy protected. We could at best find out where these sites are hosted.

Is there any way we could progress further in finding out more about this? We are talking of a campaing carried out by someone who knows their way around SEO, and which took at least 6 months to a 1 years of constant spammy bombing.

Any leads will be greatly appreciated.

Regards

5yFVjCI

Hi Patrick thanks for your prompt reply, I consider that´s the best option.

Thanks for your advice!

Hi MOZ users and friends.

I have a website that have a php template developed by ourselves, and a wordpress blog in /blog/ subdirectory. Actually we have a sitemap.xml file in the root domain where are all the subsections and blog's posts. We upgrade manually the sitemap, once a month, adding the new posts created in the blog.

I want to automate this process , so i created a sitemap index with two sitemaps inside it. One is the old sitemap without the blog's posts and a new one created with "Google XML Sitemap" wordpress plugin, inside the /blog/ subdirectory.

That is, in the sitemap_index.xml file i have:

• Domain.com/sitemap.xml (old sitemap after remove blog posts urls)

• Domain.com/blog/sitemap.xml (auto-updatable sitemap create with Google XML plugin)

Now i have to submit this sitemap index to Google Search Console, but i want to be completely sure about how to do this.

I think that the only that i have to do is delete the old sitemap on Search Console and upload the new sitemap index, is it ok ?

Hi there Cocoheadfred!

I am happy to give you some advice, if you think that your question has been answered please mark my answer as good so your question will be displayed as "answered".

Hope to see something further on about you experience with this product.

Cheers from sunny southern Spain.

Claudio

Hi Chocoheadfred

I would say that results depend strongly on dozens of different circumstances. E.G. the industry you are working with and the particular product you are advertising. Also the commercial process and the delivery. I mean all the commercial cycle should be evaluated to judge if 10x View through conversions is reasonable or not.

10x shows you that they take their time to buy but if you are selling tourism industry I would say it's a bit overrated. If you are selling a new product which needs research, also. But if you are selling a commodity then probably you should check part of the e commerce process looks like people rejects to buy in a first process and needs more time or looks for a second option.

Could you give us an insight about the product and buying process and an idea of the companies profile, I mean if they are market leaders or small new competitors in a mature market for example.

I would guess that 10x View through conversion could reflect the need of the buyer for more info, maybe your product needs lots of research, maybe your brand is new and therefore the supplier needs research. Maybe your e-commerce could be a bit more intricate and buyers want to find a easier supplier. I sense you will not find the answer tweaking the adwords campaign maybe the answer is in another part of the process.

I hope it helps a bit, let me know!

Cheers

Claudio

Hi there Rand & Juan!

This is what I really love from Moz, Rand Fishkin in person answering and giving his sincere opinion about what was going wrong with Juan´s question.

Then, further on, when arguments were even more clear and consistent, he changes his opinion and therefore takes responsibility, giving his earnest point of view about possible Moz faults that are under study and certainly will be solved ASAP thus making moz a broader and more reliable tool.

Thanks for being sincere and credible, I understand that's the best way to construct a long term relationship, a widespread community and a profitable & sound company. Keep it up!!

Cheers from Southern (today not sunny) Spain.

Claudio

Thanks for dropping by Linda,

You are right, my moz profile page has came back to some sort of normality, not the same PA but similar, I believe this "relatively small change in PA" is due to what Rand, Patrick and Matt have explained referring to "mozscape update issue".  Actually I placed a form in the moz help desk and Sean´s answer was the following: "Thanks for writing us and it does appear to be quite a mystery. While we do not seem to be able to determine the reason for this particular disappearance..." and they didn´t see any links at all in my profile which refering to links, it appeared as empty!. As a matter of fact I couldn´t fill them "again" as for me, they where perfectly correct and seen in my own profile.

Anyway, things are more or less back to where they had been before.

Thanks for all your replies, I believe it was some sort of a mistery, and will remain as a mistery...

Regards from sunny southern Spain.

Hi Patrick

Thanks for dropping by!

I do not see any relation between the mozscape issue and the real page authority (real strenght) of a link. I reviewed this link through different tools eg majestic and it vanished...

Anyway, I maybe misunderstand your answer.

Any further thoughts?

Hi there

Anybody has seen his page authority regarding his own profile page from moz.com vanishing?

Mine was aproximately 46, now PA=1

I´ve checked it and nobody is making any comments about this so maybe.... it´s just me :S? Any clues?

I loved my link from moz.com!!!

Cheers

Claudio Heilborn

Hi there!

There´s a subject that comes to my mind every now and then, something which we always thought as a subject to discuss in a forum like moz´s: Hotel Booking engines, conversion codes, and overall user experience related to them.

In these days, we are trying to help one of our clients to select the best booking engine SEO wise, but basically really oriented in measuring conversions and conversions funnels, and with confirmed excellent overall user experience.

We are sick and tired on having booking engines which will “magically” change url once we get into the process of booking, this brings enormous doubts for the user who doesn´t really know where the hell is he putting his money (booking) hence, a very bad user experience. Not really sure we like iframes either, as we believe Google will not be able to access any data from the booking process once the iframe appears as we lose all control and also the possibility to handle conversion funnels or reading anything inside this frame.

Usually we have also problems “losing” adwords conversion and analytics codes which we have to check periodically getting into the booking engine and making trial acquisitions which are time consuming and boring… then when detected the fault, claim the supplier to re load codes again, as they have being "lost" (once again), probably in some irresponsable update of the booking engine.

Some Hotel Booking Engine Brands are “Google Hotel Finder” friendly (partners?), others, on the other hand, are completely ignored by Google and just OTA´s prices are displayed and offered by means of Google Hotel Finder, not showing official hotel rates and not even giving the possibility of making reservations using the “official” website.

Adding to this, we usually find naïve programming issues with infinite problems when changing languages, different currencies, trying to go back to your previous selections, no wonder why booking is having his day in this so competitive market.

Any good and thoroughly checked suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

Claudio Heilborn @ MD Marketing Digital Spain

Hi Betnl, its really diffiicult to help you if you do not tell us how much you know about this issue. Your question was generic, without to much specification, and the answer was in this same line.

Sorry to dissapoint you with the answer  I guess that Andy and myself where just trying to give you a hint.

If your question is more precise, maybe we, or somebody that knows more than me at least, can give you some further assistance.

Invest more time in your question and probably you will find some more deep answers that go directly to the point you are looking for.

Hope you can find the answer you are looking for!

Cheers!

Hi Ryan

The tool is great and has been updated!

But, you must be logged to adwords, you don´t need to have an active account spending money, nor you will be charged for using this tool. You just open an account and use the tool.

http://adwords.google.com/keywordplanner

Edit: I have re read your question, probably the problem is that you are not using the second option of the keyword planner, in which you are searching for keyword volume. The actual layout is different, but the tool is even better than the previous. Here a link to understand the use of the tool.

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2999770?hl=en

Good luck, cheers from sunny southern spain!

Hi Rajesh

Just to confirm what Jusuf, Cristian & Chris told you...

If you are not trying to cheat google and just making urls more friendly, nothing will happen.

Help your users to navigate more confidently and the users will help you rank better.

Google has no opinion about that, what they (google) will always try to find is cheating about the content.

for example your url is about great outdoor life so you tweak your url from www.yourdomain.com/123454 to  www.yourdomain.com/living-in-the-dessert and you show content about living in the dessert. You must try to be honest on this, do not cloack just for SEO or prepare yourself to be punished by the big G

Also as Cristian said... take care of duplicate content!

Hope its useful for your purpose

Cheers

Hi Betnl

By any chance have you read anything about standout meta?

Read this relatively old link, now google news is getting hot, so have a look on this and then you can get deeper on the subject.

By the way, never EVER over use this feature!

https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/191283?hl=es

Hope it works

Cheers from southern sunny spain!

Hi Dusan

I believe your proposed metrics are the adequate.

Anyway I must tell you that I do not use only moz which I love... I use lots of Google Analytics, and probably you will also love to see how your metrics are changing  day after day, and I´ll tell you why.

It is not only a matter of visits, you also need to know if those visits "convert" as they navigate a certain amount of time, a certain amount of pages... or in the best case, bought, or at least subscribed for a newsletter...

It is a combination of kw search volume, relevance, serp position, number of visits, and returns which bring profitable results on this virtuous equation.

I hope I have given at least a glimpse of how I look for results when selecting kw strategies.

Cheers from southern Spain.

Hi again Wilco, as Olleg accurately says you must link from authoritative pages, also doubt about this link which you mention as they are very diluted and behind a tab, actually opensite doesn’t detect it nor majestic Seo. NO LINKS AT ALL....

Start linking as Olleg proposes from your root domain as featured article or promote it, or blog on it, put images with links and alts... construct a strong internal link structure and you should see immediate results. Let us know how this works and good luck!!

Cheers

Doing what you mention I arrive to another url

http://www.badkamerxxl.nl/f/merk-sphinx/serie-345_xs/

which is not the one you are asking for...

http://www.badkamerxxl.nl/f/merk-sphinx/serie-serie_345/

Hi Wilco

Having a quick look I believe you have hit the nail about internal links, I believe you are lacking on those, check if you are linked with do follow links from pages inside your domain that transmits some authority from your root domain and other authoritative sections.

Your competitor has 32 internal links from his own domain, you have none...

In a quick glance I believe that’s your problem and it should quickly solved, maybe you´ll be touching your competitors back in a short time...

Let us know how you manage with this and your results when making a correct internat link building.

Cheers from a very rarely rainy day in southern spain.

Hi Wardy, probably I was not clear enough, sorry!

Y suscribe to your original proposal, "speed test tool" as a correct anchor,

Good luck!

Hi again Wardy,

In my opinion your url and anchor (url BroadbandSpeedTest.co.uk and "speed test tool" as an anchor text) are natural enough not to bring any problems. Do not forget to tell us how it worked!

Cheers

Hi Betty!

I will try to give you a couple of hints with my honest experience, but I believe you have answered your one question!

What do you have to lose?

A) Low CTR with high ranking?

Take a look on Title and description; maybe they are great for seo but not so great to work as bate so as to make your customer click.

Have you tried authorship? That could be a real change if you can go over the hurdles on making it work correctly. There is an excellent post about this and a "case" with troubleshooting

http://moz.com/blog/getting-authorship-to-work

On the other hand, definitely take a look of your page, creative and unique content and design,  try to show your best content or at least present your content in an attractive way, first I would try to imagine who is arriving to the query and try to fulfil his needs and doubts. Usually Infographics help and could be a good idea to make one if applicable.

B. low to medium position

Then you have the same problems but you need to improve your seo, I would make a try to on-page seo with titles, descriptions H, alt and so on... but as you know that is just to begin.

Hope it’s useful for your purposes,

Cheers from a nice sunny day in southern Spain.

Definitely agree with Robert, I find no concern on a do follow link and I also would go for a long tail alt text, telling what the tool is useful for.

Good luck and anyway you can make a try and look for your own experience which by the way we would love to hear about when you achieve some conclusions.

Cheers, today no sunny day even in southern spain... :(!

As Matt-Antonino says and the original post from Miriam Ellis you attached also says: it MUST be part of the Real Company name and consistent with the name you use in your web and off-line material.

"If your business name currently doesn't contain a product or service term, don't take a wrong turn by simply adding keywords to the business title field on your Google+ Local page or other citations. This is not allowed!"

Cheers

Hi Mark,

Yours is a really interesting point. Have a look at this post, from Ana Kravitz, which I suggest you to read, I believe you will find some of the answers you are searching for.

http://www.akravitz.com/tag-track-social-media-traffic-for-google-analytics/#comment-106132

Cheers from an almost sunny day in southern Spain.

Hi again Brad, the tool is definitely accurate, As I told you, basic, but accurate. I have tried it for years and double checked it, Maybe your manual search is not clean enough? Did you clean cache etc? Sorry maybe I am asking you very basic questions, but you never know...

Give it another try, I am sure of its accuracy...

If you want to send me in private a couple dozen of kw, I offer you to double check them so you can be sure you are using the correct setup.

Cheers

Hi Brad

Did you try cute rank

For free version just one domain available, but maybe worth the paid version, very, VERY basic but if you ar just looking for ranking... its ok.

Hope its useful for your purposes

Cheers

To see incoming links,

1. Google Webmaster Tools?

2. Also if 1) you can use www.majesticseo.com (you need to approve via GWMT so that it shows all the necessary data

3. and of course you can use opensiteexplorer.org

But, and this is a great but, Facebook, linkedin and twitter will not show you lower level links, just a general link facebook.com/ or linkedin.com/ this will only help you identify the media not the post...

You will just see in your analytics as Alex said in  "social referrals" so then to know exactly which facebook post was THE ONE which brought you traffic you should have previously, now late for past traffic but still possible for the actual one, introduced tags in your posts so as to know it came from this specific one. There is a nice post about this in Ana´s Kravitz,(like lenny but not her sister... she did an amazing work on this and is very easy to DIY.

Unfortunately if you do not suspect from which post this specific and unusual traffic could have come... then, there is very little to do about the past IMHO, maybe sombody else could give you another hint... but I doubt it. Only to be tidy enough to tag every single new post that you make and track it on analytics as Alex said.

Here the link from Ana´s blog, good luck and if you need any further help do not hesitate to ring my bell.

http://www.akravitz.com/tag-track-social-media-traffic-for-google-analytics/

Cheers from a cloudy (once in a very long while) day in usually sunny Southern Spain.

Hola Jonathan!

If all those visits are real (and you are not being hacked) I would be definitely happy, (as a matter of fact much more than happy) and prepared to jump from this hosting to a much more powerful one, even if you have to invest on doing so. That sort of viral effect is something we marketers are searching as the holy grail in the crusades… you shouldn’t reject it, on the contrary you should make good use of it.

You will profit on SEO, look it this way, you would have to invest a huge amount of money to get this relevant traffic.

Build a strong SEO on your basic set of keywords around this post, and profit on this, it will have a huge impact and payback on SEO positioning. Even though your business is local you will profit on relevant, real and viral traffic into your site, wherever this traffic comes and specially if you could transform your blog in magnet for relevant keywords.

Relevant traffic (wherever they come from) will bring you positioning, and positioning (also in Ecuador) will bring you visits (from Ecuador) & that you can transform into more clients to your local store.

If you do not know how to do this, here in Moz you will find lots of friends that will try to help you doing so…

Hasta la vista!

Cheers from an incredibly nice Saturday winter morning in southern sunny, always sunny, Spain.

Hi Jack

Believe it or not, G+ links comments with attached links are do follow...

That means someone from that G+ profile made an enormous amount of posts with links to your site via G+

You can read some more info about this here

http://moz.com/blog/google-plus-correlations

I suggest you disavowing this unnatural link by using GWMT.

Read more about disavowing here.

http://moz.com/blog/google-disavow-tool

Also should take care of other search engines as this disavowing tool will only work with google.

Hope this is useful for your purposes!

Cheers from southern Spain

Hi again Marcus,

In this case I used majesticseo to have a quick glance, you will be able to see these links even with the free version. Remember to start slowly with new links and change your anchor + do not link only to home, build a strong net all over your site. Wish you good luck, keep me posted!

Cheers from another really sunny morning in southern Spain.

Unfortunately we usually appear to learn more from huge problems than from nice and successful experiences...

That’s the massive profit on sharing; we can profit from others experience!

Cheers

[URL]]([URL=http://imgur.com/yhmjs1P][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/yhmjs1P.jpg[/IMG][/URL])

Hi Marcus,

Have a look to 1778 backlinks coming from asooy.com they look definitely spammy... probably others, also would advise you to move cautiously with new links 100´s links per day could show spammy also with a site that previously had no backlinks except those spammy ones and also about 3000 from bradford-webdesign.co.uk which don´t either look to much of "natural" sort of links...

Maybe disavow those ones and start slowly and naturally with new links, change your anchor, and work them from different domains.

Hope you good luck from southern sunny Spain!

Hi Michael / Chris

In this case, unfortunately I have a harsh experience which makes me differ with Chris´s experience; I would definitely go forward with disavowing if you are really interested on making clear for Google that you do not value those links, even if they point to non-existing urls

A couple of years back we had a client (and still have it) with a huge hack that produced thousands of links pointing to pages of our client´s hacked domain. We even suspected of a “black hat” maneuver to make damage to our client´s SEO through this procedure.

We had a hell of a problem letting Google understand that those links where empty and pointed to a 404, even after we deleted all the content and the urls didn´t exist anymore... strange behavior still happened from time to time and until the appearance of disavow tool….unexpectedly Google re indexed those links, even that they pointed already for YEARS to nonexistent 404 urls

I would take the time and disavow if you are really interested on Google not indexing those links.

I hope you can profit from this experience.

Cheers to you both, form sunny southern Spain!

Hi Shawn124

If you are both relevant to each other, which you have described you are, and if it is reputable, which you have also said it is... I find no problem whatsoever!

Do so if you can and encourage your readers to have a look in this other blog and bring opinions to yours. You can even write about something that this other blog has written and link to him in your article, to show other points of view over the same subject. All clean and honest SEO. White hat SEO in your hands!

That is building a healthy network and I cannot find any penalty or risk on doing so. What google and anybody with two grams of brain should not do is linking to tons of unrelated blogs just to try to get some "link juice" without any common sense.

Hope it’s useful for you!

Regards

Claudio

Hi Byron

At a first glance at least, I would not agree with your new SEO. I definitely prefer your actual flat pyramid url scheme than this new high piramid url proposed.

Google will never read those deep new urls!

Maybe I would try to change your actual ones, but never hiding them three leves deep beneath earth...After undergoing such penalties I personally would not be so much afraid on making huge changes, and I would take the "risk" of changing them but do not hiding them!

Hope it helps to build a panorama.

Good luck

Cheers from a sunny winter in Spain

Claudio

Cuterank Great free version for single site!

I love the unlimited time historic graphs for ... good to show clients the "hard work done"!

I wouldnt pack it up with a huge list of keywords and serps cause as it runs in your computer and it may turn a little bit unstable and block serps.

Cheers!

attached a long time historic graph

3oOiI0h.png?1

Hi there Auke Jongbloed

Looks like you are a little bit disappointed, it would be a pity not to make use and take real advantage of this tool... I´ll do my best to guide you, as far as I can, on this extremely powerful tool you have started to learn to use.

1) Reports, I would advise you to use the new dashboard http://analytics.moz.com/dashboard/overview it’s awesome and depending on the settings (http://analytics.moz.com/settings/campaign) you make, you will be mailed weekly to your email. Anyway, you can view the reports for the accounts you created once moz has collected all the necessary info, here: http://analytics.moz.com/search/on-page-grade-report they are really quick, but we must have some patience (i know its a seldom rare characteristic for us humans but, let’s try our best)  as they need some time, you know google, and all those search engines folks are not so keen to give us precious info...

i) Here, you will be able to manage initial settings of your campaigns, will take approx. one week to collect all the    info and generate report http://analytics.moz.com/manage-campaigns

ii)and here you have help resources and documentation for reports: http://moz.com/help/pro/on-page-reports

2. Probably didn´t collect the necessary info, but wouldn´t guess, sorry if I’m wrong...:(

3. Pls have a look at the message attached about this issue, actually its not an issue but a notice. If you correctly used canonicals on a single page it would be advised here: http://analytics.moz.com/search/on-page-grade and here http://analytics.moz.com/search/analyze-page on this last one you will find a list of issues and notices, if you did correctly your homework for canonicals, then you will find a notice about having it done.

Hope giving you some help on this great tool for improving your skills and knowledge for SEO!

Cheers from this sunny southern Spain

vp9vWZ6.png?1

Iris if you do not want your web be found, delete it from your previous post!

As we told you, after examining home of your web we can observe that it has used canonicals adequately.

I wouldn´t get annoyed about misunderstandings and would keep up research about this powerful tool, read, learn, ask questions as you did, you will be definitely rewarded.

Cheers

475 results for in followerwonk for  "york yorkshire"

Try this to start and look at results. Would that be a relevant and useful result for you?

For the moment I would try those sort of combinations.

"la vittoria è vicina"

Keep on trying and you will prevail!

Cheers from southern spain.

Buon giorno caro amico David

I am guessing... probably used any twitter tool (or this new and great moz.com twitter tool: https://followerwonk.com/) to follow all you lucky guys living in York...and just included in their profile "Set to open October 22nd! @Andrewpern of @thestaratharome, fantastic new restaurant situated in the historic Lendal Engine House, York Museum Gardens."

Is this what you are wondering or I am really mixed up?

By the way, good and cheap strategy...

Hanno un grande giorno!

Cheers

Hi Iris, as Martijn Scheybeler says, moz could be reporting  a NOTICE finding those canonicals.

You should see something as: "Here are some other things we found in our last crawl about this page. These notices might not be affecting your site negatively, but might be interesting for you to know."

It´s a notice not an issue to be solved.

Hope it´s useful and you can continue scaling about using moz which is a terrific tool to optimize, just need to get used to it!

Cheers

Hi Mike, I do not use SEM Rush but I do use moz.com, we must tune up the kw ranking because it will propose you a set of keywords but maybe not all of them or not exactly the ones you are looking for.

Actually if you just want to check your own site. Try the free version for cuterank

http://cuterank.net/download/

Basic but works and it is for free. There you will have to put the keywords and the search engine you want to check and it will povide you some useful info.

Hope you profit on this